


Bats and Bone(r)s

by 221b_hound



Series: Captains of Industry [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Hipsters, Australia, Bat John, Bat!John, Boners, Dream Sex, Halloween Costumes, Licking, M/M, Melbourne, Oral Sex, Skeleton Boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 01:36:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5072935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is only going to the Halloween party so he can see the bat costume that John made but wouldn't show him. That tight, lycra bat costume. Sherlock is wearing lycra skeleton costume that hides nothing. Especially when he keeps pointing out the extra bone he's just made. So Halloween is celebrated wtih lycra sex, and then in dreams with skeleton sex and... tiny BatJohn sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bats and Bone(r)s

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AtlinMerrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/gifts).



> Atlinmerrick, aranel_parmadil and I were talking about how adorable and sexy BatJohn is, and giggling over Aranel's superb reading of Atlin's BatJohn dream story. 
> 
> Then of course I wondered if I might write some saucy little BatJohn being saucy.
> 
> If BatJohn (or skeleton) sex is really not your thing, even if it's a naughty little dream, turn away now.

Let’s jump forward nearly a year.

John and Sherlock have not been dating the entire time. It’s not called ‘dating’ when you live together. There was a settling in period, of course, but the minor gripes and negotiations of living with someone were usually resolved satisfactorily and then celebrated with awesome sex.

Actually, the ones that were not resolved satisfactorily were generally followed with awesome sex too, so they both reasonably felt like the winner in any given scenario.

So, here they are – a month shy of an anniversary of a rooftop dance and a too-sudden/just-right declaration (and each is pretending it’s not a big deal and each is making secret plans because it is bloody well _is_ a big deal) – attending a Halloween party.

Halloween isn’t really a very Australian thing, or wasn’t, but the last few years have seen a change. And why not? It's a good excuse for a party. Besides, it gives those Aussie blokes a chance to frock up without anyone questioning their choices for the day.

(Don’t believe it? Check out Melbourne Cup Day any given year, and the number of hairy blokes in heels and swirly skirts. But that’s psychoanalysis for another time.)

And also, who doesn’t love a party?

Well, Sherlock, usually, but he’s making an exception this year. But that’s only because he wants to see John in The Costume.

The thing is, Greg Lestrade loves a party. (Yes, he’s one of the strapping Aussie blokes in a frock, but he does not even pretend to be straight, unlike a lot of the others – he just likes wearing the knickers and the red pumps and showing off his legs because he knows that Mycroft can’t stop thinking about the fact that he’s wearing them.)

Greg loves a party and the minute he realised doing Halloween was on the card, he was right in there, making plans and sending invites and ordering the kegs and, number one priority, creating the killer Halloween playlist. _Spirit Got Lost_ is always on early, and that Paul Kelly song about the drowned girl, a bit of Severed Heads and Nick Cave around midnight for the atmosphere, maybe Angie Hart’s _Blue_ for the tail end – it’s a good 3am song.

Mycroft also loves a party. It used to be he thought he loved civilised little soirees with canapés and fine champagne and small talk about politics in the Balkans. Turns out he detests that crap.

Turns out that Mycroft Holmes loves being a party host and spending days before the event making themed foodstuffs from Not Quite Nigella’s inspired blog posts. He fields phone calls from people asking for costume advice, and so there are rarely duplicates. (He even keeps a few easy spare costumes in the back room on the night, in case somebody thinks they can get away without making an effort. Cardboard boxes work a treat for both Ned Kelly armour and helmet and, in a pinch, a coconut-encrusted lamington.)

Speaking of costumes. Back to John. Back to Sherlock wanting to see John in The Costume.

John likes Greg’s parties. He likes finding a funny costume, and often they are ones that are a bit snugly fitting. He has learned to appreciate his body and how well it works, after all its been through. He doesn’t costume to display the scars though. He never dresses as a soldier and he never dresses as a doctor.

This year, in honour of the bat skeleton that Sherlock has on their wall, he has made a bat costume.

Not a Batman costume. That’s so 2008. It is a bat costume, which he made, with some assistance from Mycroft, except for the headpiece, which he bought online from a guy who makes costumes for furries. It’s got a sweet little bat face with huge ears that he pulls over his head; he can see through the black gauzy eyepieces and it conceals the moustache, because he’s not prepared to colour the mo black to suit the outfit.

The outfit is basically a black leotard and black faux-leather wings that have bamboo across the top and down the phalanges. The wings are attached to him at shoulder, elbow and wrist and when he raises his arms, his wings unfold.

He looks pretty awesome in it.

Or so Sherlock surmises. John hasn’t let him see it yet, because John is a tease.

Sherlock’s made his own costume too. Sticking with the black leotard theme, he bought one to fit his long, lean, muscular frame, and he has painted a human skeleton on it, front and back. It’s extremely accurate. He has black leather gloves, likewise painted, and those Fila Skele-toe climbing shoes. When he couldn’t find a full-head skeleton mask he liked, he has slicked back his hair with _sooo_ much product, and used black and white paint to make his own head a skull. Because he’s a clever bastard.

Sherlock has a different way of teasing John about the costumes. He teases John by wearing the skeleton leotard around the house once or twice and bending over a lot.

It almost has the desired effect, but John still won’t show off the bat costume until the night in question.

The Mystrade Shindig (as it’s come to be known among the cognoscenti) is as awesome as ever. Mycroft has made a gingerbread Hogwarts, coffin dip, shrunken heads made of apple for the mulled wine, cauldron cake pops, and tiny little hotdogs that look like severed fingers. Cupcake decorations range from haunted house silhouettes and crows made of black fondant to Jack Skellington smiley faces.

John, the little bastard, wears a long coat all the way to Mycroft and Greg’s two-storey Fitzroy place with its iron lace and top floor balcony and wee back yard.

Which means that Sherlock – who nearly caused three car collisions and _did_ cause one woman to walk straight into a light pole, what with his six feet of tall and Oh Dear God of backside acreage in practically painted-on lycra walking from their place to the taxi – doesn’t get to see the glory that is BatJohn until they get to his brother’s house.

Greg is dressed as Jessica Rabbit, complete with sexy bunny ears, and tells everyone he has Myxomatosis.

Mycroft is not Roger Rabbit. No. Mycroft is dressed sumptuously as a zombie Queen Elizabeth I. A very tastefully done undead queen.

And BatJohn is glorious. Compact. Sleek. Those fantastically strong calves and thighs. That excellent little arse. The sassy I’m King of Lycra walk. The wicked little wiggle in that walk because he knows Sherlock is watching. The snap of the wings spreading and the snap of them flicking back into place when John dances, or just feels like snapping them, because, well, fuck, John Watson is a cocky sonofabitch when he wants to be.

John mingles, Sherlock hangs back and watches. He’s not so good at parties and tends to say things that piss people off. John keeps coming back to him, though, to stand with him at the wall to joke and hold hands and giggle about Sherlock’s observations.

(Those observations are the reason he rarely comes to these dos. The last Halloween party he attended, six years ago, resulted in someone trying to glass Sherlock with a plastic cup and Greg having to explain to the ambulance that the knife in the guy’s chest was fake but the blood nose was entirely real, and the result of the victim slipping on spilled salsa and landing face first on the wooden statue of Buddha they’d bought in a market in Thailand. The irony was lost on the victim, but not on Greg, and certainly not on Mycroft, who had surreptitiously shifted the statue into position _because how fucking dare you raise a hand to my brother even if the little shit deserves it_?)

Each time John comes back to Sherlock, he brings a drink for his skeletal sweetie. One time he comes back and Sherlock is pointing out and naming every anatomically correct bone on the costume, his diction a little too precise. He brings water after that.

John goes on another of his rounds of the room and Sherlock takes a sip of his drink. He spits it out into a pot plant. Water. Boring. He positions himself instead by the buffet and casts about for John again. Ah. There he is. Dancing. Sherlock loves dancing with John, and John keeps asking him too, but Sherlock has become wedded to this bloody wall because these bloody parties make him bloody uncomfortable and he wishes he’d told John this. But John really wanted to come, and Sherlock really wants John to have what he wants in life, and so here they are.

It was worth it, mind. Little BatJohn is fucking delicious. Like a little liquorice stick of sex. Like a Darrell Lea liquorice twist of lithe and confident and perfect sex on sexy black legs.

Sherlock has a sudden craving for liquorice, and instead eats four of the black crows right off the top of the cupcakes. They stick to the roof of his mouth and make him thirsty.

Sherlock drinks three glasses of mulled wine in a row and chews on the little appley shrunken skulls and eats the crow-denuded cupcakes kind of mindlessly while he just watches his boyfriend being – not to put too fine a point on it – _fucking hot_.

John is dancing with some guy that Greg knows from a pub somewhere, but Sherlock can tell from the attitude of the bat head that he’s looking at Sherlock. The pub guy is getting a bit handsy. John snaps his wings at him, and pub guy backs off.

Sherlock puts his glass down and wobbles a bit – _why is he wobbling?_ – over to John.

‘Dance with me and I’ll have sex with you later,’ he drawls.

‘You’ll have sex with me anyway,’ says BatJohn.

‘Yes I will,’ says Sherlock emphatically, and he plasters his lycra skeleton right up against BatJohn and they dance together, very close, possibly very nearly having sex right now.

When the music finishes he draws away from his John. His BatJohn. His little BatJohn. And then he looks down at the front of his own costume and giggles. He runs his forefinger over the painted on clavicle, and down, describing the bones as he goes. Sternum. Ribs. Pelvis.

His finger comes to rest over the bulge in the front of the leotard.

‘John. John. I’ve got an extra bone. I’ve got a _boner_.’

He can’t see it, but he knows that BatJohn is smirking, because John always finds him adorable when he’s drunk.

_Oh, that’s it. I’m wobbly because I’m drruuuuuunk._

He leans close to John’s felt bat-ear and stage whispers into it, ‘ ** _Because I have a sexy bat boyfriend_**!’

His sexy bat boyfriend wraps his arms around his anatomically correct (plus one extra bone) sweetie and tugs him close. BatJohn dances with Sherlock, a slippery kind of sway, which is doing absolutely nothing to get rid of the boner and absolutely everything to make it more prominent.

‘Time to go home, skeleton boy.’ BatJohn’s voice sounds kind of husky in there.

‘Let’s go home and have sex!’ says Sherlock loudly into the bat ear of the costume.

Somewhere in there, John giggles. ‘Bloody oath. Excellent idea. Come on.’ BatJohn squeezes a handful of lush arse that has no business being on a skeleton, and with the same snap and decisiveness with which he has deployed his wings all night, John guides his skeleton boy outside. Greg waves them goodbye, laughing at them, and Mycroft rolls his eyes.

Well, at least no household decorations were destroyed this year.

John dials for an Uber car to take them home. Sherlock is well behaved on the journey. He keeps his hands to himself, and his tongue, and his boner, and instead tells John all about the driver. But he says it all in a soft whisper, directed into the bat ear, while John pats his leg.

In their bedroom, John pulls off the bat head and tries to take off the leotard, but Sherlock is all over him like cling wrap. John, who is in fact three sheets to the wind though he hides it better than Sherlock’s, pushes his hands into the clay-like goop on Sherlock’s hair, and kisses back like he thinks it’d revive an actual skeleton.

The two of them fall onto their bed and kiss and frot and writhe and wrap black lycra legs around each other. They try to take the leotards off but that’s taking too long and fuck it looks sexy right where it is, oh, fuck that for a joke, so they right back to clinging, kissing, rutting, sliding, and, in quite a short time, coming.

BatJohn flops back on the bed, his little wings snapped wide, and skeleton boy sprawls over the top of him.

And both men dream.

*

John is dancing with Jack Skellington, who is long and lean and smart and confident and funny, and paradoxically also lush and awkward and a little uncertain sometimes.

Jack Skellington is gorgeous, thinks John. Jack Skellington is all the things I’ve been wanting and needing. Jack is beautiful and brave. And he sees things inside John that nobody else ever does.

They stop dancing and look down and John’s heart is red and shaped like a cartoon love heart and its beating and beating and beating and beating…

‘You did that,’ John tells Jack, ‘I used to keep it in a box but you found it and put it back where it’s supposed to be.’

Jack’s stitched smile grows warm and his big black eyes grow pale blue-grey-green like the sky.

‘You gave me eyes,’ he says to John, and spins away, dancing like a sprite, and back, taking John’s hands up in his own bony hands that regardless feel soft and warm. ‘I’m all stitched up but you gave me a tongue.’

John pulls Jack close and kisses the stitched mouth which opens under his lips.

‘Sherlock,’ he breathes and Jack who is Sherlock winds his bony body all around John. John’s strong hands rub and stroke the bones, all those lovely bones that used to be fragile but now they’re not. Now Sherlock who is Jack is a wonderful creature who wriggles and croons and sighs as John strokes every bone, making them both dizzy.

Because as John strokes the skeleton, the skeleton grows heavier and lusher, and that fills John up. It was like John didn’t have bones before, because nobody could see them. Now Sherlock sees all the bones inside him, like an X-ray, taking a photo and colouring it in and putting it all back inside John’s skin. Sherlock sees all the big bones and the small ones; the cracked ones and the mended ones and the tiny ones and the floating ones - all the 206 bones there inside him, and Sherlock can name them all, and so he’s naming John.

John had started to rebuild his skeleton before Sherlock, but he’d still forgotten a lot of the bones, and now he has names for them all, and they are kept safe in Sherlock’s head, in his mouth, in his hands.

Sherlock who is Jack who is a skeleton is now a man again. He’s Sherlock again, wrapped around John, kissing him, filling him up with love. Sherlock knows the names of all of John’s bones and now John is properly, wholly real again, the last pieces of himself finally clicking into place.

John spreads himself wide and Sherlock kisses and holds him and slides into him with the other bone, the new one, fucking him slow and gentle while John sighs and rocks into the body rocking into his.

‘I like your new bone,’ John says as the pleasure builds up.

Sherlock nuzzles at John’s moustache and kisses his mouth and rocks his hips and fucks John and says, ‘I like all of yours, too.’

And it’s true. John’s bones are cherished. His cartoon heart is cherished. The parts of him that were empty are full and they are cherished…

… and John comes, with his lips over Sherlock’s mouth, unstitched and free and telling him true things that fill him up with joy.

After, John is warm, wrapped up, Jack Skellington – who is really Sherlock Holmes – snuggled up beside him and singing softly in his ear.

 _I've never felt so good before_  
_This empty place inside of me is filling up_  
_I simply cannot get enough_  
_I want it, oh, I want it_  
_Oh, I want it for my own_  
_I've got to know_  
_I've got to know_  
_What is this place that I have found?_  
_What is this?_

‘Yes. Yes, I know. Thank you,’ says John.

Sherlock sings:

 _And in my bones I feel the warmth_  
_That’s coming from inside_

‘I love you,’ John tells Sherlock, and Jack nuzzles his face against John’s neck.

*

Sherlock is in a dark cave. He is naked and in a dark cave and lying on his back.

He is naked, in a dark cave, lying on his back, and a little voice is talking to him. Squeaking at him. Saying lovely things in a high, appreciative trill.

‘Delicious!’ says the voice, ‘Fuuuuuuuck, you look delicious.’

He hears a flutter and feels a tiny warm body land on his chest. He can feel a furry torso, furry legs. He feels the brush of soft wings, leather and fuzz, on his bare chest.

‘Soooooo pretty,’ says the squeaky voice of a tiny, lovely little bat.

The little furry body moved up Sherlock’s chest to his face, and then holds onto Sherlock’s cheeks. Then it hops up onto his chin.

‘Open your eyes, pretty thing,’ the tiny bat with John’s voice, only squeaky, says to him, and Sherlock obeys – of course he does.

And there is John, only itty bitty, a little bat, all soft and warm and adorable and licking his little lips.

‘Ooooh,’ says BatJohn, ‘Your eyes are like the sky.’

Sherlock can only breathe out a gentle huff of warm air, because tiny little BatJohn is so very adorable and beautiful. His eyes are big and blue and his ears are large and pink and they swivel, listening to everything.

‘I want to see your wings,’ breathes Sherlock.

BatJohn grins and spreads his wee wings with a martial snap, and Sherlock thinks that John is marvellous whatever his shape.

‘Can I kiss them?’ he asks.

BatJohn giggles and manoeuvres so that Sherlock can kiss his wings. Sherlock puckers up to press soft kisses to the soft and fragile things, then he sticks the tip of his tongue out and licks along the ridges where there is bone under the skin.

‘You’re beautiful,’ breathes Sherlock.

There’s a flutter and little claws prick against his cheek and nose and chin while BatJohn moves. The tiny bat ends up with feet on Sherlock’s chin, wings spread as his teeny hands hold his cheeks. The teeny bat puckers his sweet little mouth and kisses Sherlock’s lower lip. Then his upper lip. He’s not big enough to kiss both lips at once, so he just kisses them each in turn. A dozen times.

Sherlock goes boneless and delights in the tiny kisses.

When the little bat is happy with the number of kisses he leans up Sherlock’s face, hanging onto his nose to stare into Sherlock’s blue eyes.

‘Let’s have sex!’ suggests BatJohn with much enthusiasm.

‘Oh, yes,’ agrees Sherlock with a rumbling breath, which he realises, as he exhales it, blows warm and wonderful right over his little BatJohn’s little bat penis.

‘Mmmmm,’ says BatJohn in his high voice, snuggling against Sherlock’s face, ‘Niiiiiiiice.’

Sherlock breathes again, then puckers up and kisses, and keeps his lips puckered as BatJohn, shivering all over, humps his lower lip.

Sherlock sticks out the tip of his tongue and BatJohn thinks that is fucking perfect, and rubs against it.

Sherlock can feel, and taste, his little bat’s excitement grow, and he is utterly happy to lie here, naked, in the dark (though as it happens he can see BatJohn perfectly well, as though John has his own light inside that makes everything clear) letting his tongue be used as a sex aid. It is, he thinks, the best of all possible worlds.

Until, that is, BatJohn, who is a considerate little mammal, with a final little wriggle, flaps away from Sherlock’s face and down towards his crotch where a large, wet erection is crying out for attention.

‘Oh,’ breathes Sherlock in happy surprise as BatJohn snuggles around his cock, wrapping tiny legs and little wings around the shaft, and proceeds to lick and lick and lick and lick at the wet slit. BatJohn pauses to nuzzle his soft little nose and his naughty darting tongue under and around the foreskin, then back to the slit, and again, and again. The whole time, his warm little body is rubbing itself gleefully against the hot, silky and increasingly damp skin of Sherlock’s prick. BatJohn is getting damper by the moment, but it’s only spurring him on. BatJohn wriggles and licks and humps and hums until Sherlock’s hips are jerking. BatJohn is hanging on for dear life, giggling at the bucking bronco ride and humping against the motion enthusiastically.

Then Sherlock is coming in spurts all over BatJohn and BatJohn seems to be saying…

‘Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!’

When Sherlock subsides, BatJohn takes off again. He lands with a drunken thump against Sherlock’s chin.

‘Tongue! Tongue! Tongue!’ BatJohn chants, spreading himself over Sherlock’s mouth. Sherlock obliges happily, and makes his tongue into a hard point, then soft, then hard, then soft, as his little BatJohn croons and chitters and makes the happiest of little happy noises until he comes all over Sherlock’s tongue. He sinks down with a contented sigh on Sherlock’s face. Sherlock puckers up and kisses his little fuzzy belly.

‘Love you,’ squeaks the little bat.

‘I love you too,’ rumbles Sherlock. The teeny bat snuggles up beside him, tangled in Sherlock’s now curly hair. Sherlock strokes its soft back with a fingertip.

‘What would I have done if you hadn’t found me?’ he asks the bat.

‘You found _me_ ,’ says the bat.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I’ll always find you,’ sighed BatJohn into Sherlock’s ear.

‘How?’

‘Echolocation,’ squeaks BatJohn sleepily.

‘But how can you tell it’s me you’re finding?’

‘I know,’ says BatJohn, ‘You’re shaped like fate.’

Sherlock cups his hand over BatJohn’s little body to keep him warm and safe, unspeakably glad to know that he won’t ever be lost again. John will always know where to find him.

*

Sherlock wakes hot, sweaty, happy, and with his leotard sticking to him, thigh to belly, and he really needs to pee. He can’t get coordinated to get out of the goddamn thing so he cuts a hole in it to deal with the bladder situation first up, then cuts the whole thing off with scissors.

He is in the shower, sluicing down, when John stumbles in. He’s having trouble with coordination too. Sherlock points at the scissors and John makes an urgent sartorial alteration so he, too, can relieve his bladder. He stands bewildered and sleepy-dopy on the bathmat until Sherlock, who is a thoughtful boyfriend, steps out of the shower to cut John free of his equally sticky, clingy lycra.

They wash each other down. They laugh. They kiss.

‘You make a sexy little bat,’ Sherlock tells John.

‘You make a sexy little skeleton,’ John tells Sherlock.

In a year from now, they’ll do costumes again. But they won’t bother with the party side of things, unless you count the party they have at home.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Spirit Got Lost is by Mental as Anything.  
> Paul Kelly's So Much Water, So Close to Home was based on a short story by Raymond Carver.
> 
> These are the Fila Skele-toe climbing shoes:  
> 
> 
> If you like to cater lavishly for Halloween parties, you really cannot go past Not Quite Nigella, food blogger and all round lovely person. [Find her blog here,](http://www.notquitenigella.com/2012/10/29/halloween-party-food-2/) and here are some of her Halloween themed foods:
> 
>  

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Bat!John, Captains of Industry style](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5108306) by [MoiraColleen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoiraColleen/pseuds/MoiraColleen)




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